NASA released photos from the James Webb telescope this Tuesday that just passed. I heard about it immediately because education’s office where I have my desk is shared by planetarium staff, so of course they were talking about it as soon as the photos were released to the public, as well as the buildup leading up to the release. While the release was on Tuesday, it’s exciting for the museum, because we were able to already get the first four photos that were released from the telescope printing and put up in the planetarium lobby and replace four older photos that were taken from the Hubble telescope. The four photos we put up on the wall was the nebula, the quintet of galaxies, the deep field which the deepest and sharpest infrared photo of the universe to date (the photo contains galaxies that are billion of years old, created during the initial Big Bang), and then lastly, the most visually appealing, the Carina Nebula. We’re going to add labels to them soon, but they’re already up and ready to be seen.

While the James Webb telescope offered a nice getaway from a current large project, that doesn’t mean it’s not there. We’re currently in a bit of a limbo situation. We need to start moving objects into the gallery, as well as cleaning them up. However, they have a planned floor cleaning in the gallery, so our schedule got moved back a day, so we have a day less to get the Tech Savvy exhibit setup. So, between Tuesday and Friday, we will be cleaning the exhibit pieces and moving them into the gallery, and Monday they will be moving everything out, I presume, while they do the floor and gallery cleaning before the new items are moved in and arranged. It’s all very exciting! We’re getting very close to the opening of the exhibit.